


When the Dance Is Done

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Getting Together, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6432694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Sam had surprised Dean Wednesday night with the announcement that he wanted to attend the Wilson Middle School fall dance. He wasn't by nature a social kid, keeping to himself and his books mostly. It wasn't that he didn't have it in him. Sam had made plenty of friends in years past when they'd held still long enough, but that was generally the problem. They didn't hold still long enough and in the end, they always left.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sam attends the schools dance with one agenda, but ends the night on a completely different set of intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Dance Is Done

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Linden](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden) for help with the Zeppelin songs. I am ashamed to say, Dean girl or no, I am not a fan.

Dean blinked himself awake at the incessant buzzing of his phone on the floor beside the couch, reached for it and nearly tossed it aside on seeing a number he didn't recognize, but when the local area code registered in his sleep fogged brain, he flipped it open.

'Sammy?'

'Dean, come get me.'

Dean pushed himself upright on the couch, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and swallowing a yawn as he automatically started shoving his feet into his boots.

'Everything okay, kiddo?.

'Just. Come get me. Please.'

Dean didn't ask anymore questions. The tone in Sam's voice was flat, and the kid didn't sound like that except when things went really wrong, but he was walking and talking and breathing enough to call so Dean didn't need to worry that he was in any mortal danger at any rate.

'I'm on my way.'

The school was maybe a fifteen minute drive, and Sam's tone hadn't been urgent even if it was emotionless, so Dean didn't feel the need to break any traffic laws. When he rolled up the school's circular drive, Sam was standing just inside the glass double doors under the watchful eye of a teacher. When he tried to burst out the door, the teacher's laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and motioned for Dean to come inside. Dean sighed, threw the Impala in park, got out and sauntered up the walk. 

He didn't have to get close enough to see his little brother white knuckling the door handle to know that he was upset about something. The kid's face was a mask, but Dean had twelve years practice reading the stance and set of those thin, bony shoulders. He started to wonder just what kind of trouble he was going to have to deflect. It was a sixth grade dance for crying out loud a how much trouble could there be?

'Mr. Winchester?' the teacher held the door open for him, spilling some 80's syrupy slow rock out into the night that set Dean's teeth on edge. Sam made to go to him before he got inside but the teacher kept an arm out to restrain him which kind of pissed Dean off because no one was allowed to touch Sam like that, to hurt him or restrain him, as far as Dean was concerned.

'Yeah,' he answered, and the teacher raised an eyebrow. He gave a one shoulder shrug. 'The younger one. Our dad's out of town for the weekend.'

'I see.' She did not look pleased.

'Is there a problem? Is Sammy in some kind of trouble here?'

'No, of course not. He said he wasn't feeling well and asked if he could call you to pick him up. He wanted to walk home, but you understand, naturally, we can't simply let the students wander off in the dark alone.'

Dean had to contain a derisive snort. _Yeah, if you only knew, lady_ , he thought, but said as seriously as he could manage,

'Yeah, of course.' He turned to Sam. 'You ready to go, kiddo?'

Sam nodded and Dean looped an arm around the kid's neck and dragged him in close. 'C'mon then. My pizza's getting cold at home.'

Sam was fast getting to the age that he was starting to dodge Dean's gestures of affection even when he was teasing, but the force with which Sam shook Dean's arm away surprised him.

'Sam?'

The teacher frowned in concern and called after Sam as he made to shove through the door, 'Have a good night, Sam. I hope you feel better.' 

Sam let the door slam back, nearly clipping Dean across the nose.

'Sammy, what the hell?' Dean shouted once he was outside, but Sam had already wrenched open the Impala's door and thrown himself in the passenger seat. Dean cursed softly and went around the other side, sinking into the driver's seat, but he didn't immediately start the engine.

In the diffuse, yellow glow of the street lamp, Dean could see angry tears trickling from the corners of Sam's eyes as he stared straight ahead and gnawed on his lower lip.

'So,' Dean said slowly. 'I'm guessing things didn't go so well?'

Sam snorted, grabbed the tie Dean had lent him and very patiently tied for him three hours ago in front of their cracked bathroom mirror, and jerked at the knot, stripping it from his shirt collar with a loud snap, and threw it on the dash.

'Hey! That's my best tie,' Dean protested.

'It's your _only_ damn tie,' Sam retorted.

He yanked at the slightly too long sleeves of his second hand sport jacket until he could eel out of it and throw it over the seat back. He set to work on his collar buttons, fingers fumbling in his angry rush, still crying silently.

'Sam... ' Dean reached for him, but Sam jerked away with a bitten curse. Dean snatched his wrist, wrenched it down and held tight. 'Sam! Cut it out.'

Sam twisted and wriggled, trying to escape his brother's grip, but even if he had put on three inches since the start of school, he was still no match for Dean's strength.

He huffed angrily and stilled.

Dean waited a count of five and then slowly loosened his grip. 'Okay. Now, you want to tell me what this is all about? 'Cause this? This is not just some girl turning you down.'

Sam had surprised Dean Wednesday night with the announcement that he wanted to attend the Wilson Middle School fall dance. He wasn't by nature a social kid, keeping to himself and his books mostly. It wasn't that he didn't have it in him. Sam had made plenty of friends in years past when they'd held still long enough, but that was generally the problem. They didn't hold still long enough and in the end, they always left.

They'd been in this small time Indiana town since July, though, with John coming and going often enough to make them seem like a legit family with a single dad who traveled for work trying to make ends meet. It was one more of his sporadic attempts to give them some stability, and Dean didn't know whether to thank him for it or cuss him out, because _something_ was going to happen at some point that brought John through the front door with the order to be packed in twenty and they'd be on the road ten minutes after that.

Dean had learned to deal wth that long ago, and it didn't bother him anymore, not much anyway. It was Sammy he worried about because Sam still hoped, and bouts of semi-stability like this only gave him a false sense of security.

Which is what had led to Sam wanting to go to the dance.

Jenna Pulliam.

She was smart and beautiful and Sam was the only boy in her grade tall enough to look over the top of her head. She was his lab partner in biology, and he was completely smitten. So, he'd come to Dean and asked if he could borrow his tie and jacket and the cologne he kept at the bottom of his duffle and only wore on the nights he was trawling for company and Sam knew not to wait up.

Dean had taken him to Goodwill to find a decent jacket that didn't swallow him whole, because Dean had filled out through the chest and shoulders last summer and was on almost equal footing with John now. He'd stood patiently with Sam in front of the mirror while he fumbled with the tie and finally reached around and carefully tied it for him. When he'd turned the kid around to straighten his collar, his breath caught in his throat at now handsome his baby brother cleaned up. He'd had to swallow a couple of times around something that was more than just big brother pride before he could speak,

'You look good, kid. Now, go get your girl.' Sam's smile had faltered somewhat at that, Dean attributed it to his nerves, and the lump that was in his throat? Well, that was just something Dean had been dealing with for a long time. Something dark and nameless that was taking the shape of _want_ more and more often of late and was sketching itself out as jealousy tonight, though Dean was a far cry from fully understanding just exactly what he was jealous of.

'Can we just go?' Sam mumbled and turned away to rest his head on the passenger window.

Dean sighed. 'You know what you need?' he said, trying to tighten the mood. 'Good music.'

He turned the key and fiddled with the tape deck and Zeppelin's _Fool In the Rain_ filled the car. He grinned. 'Can't get a girl with that heartbreaker crap they were playing in there.'

Sam rolled his eyes. 'You can't dance to this, Dean,' he said irritably. 'And anyway, I wasn't trying to get the girl.'

Dean frowned. 'I thought.... Wasn't that the whole point of tonight?'

Sam turned toward him long enough to offer a stabbing glare and then turned back to the window.

'Yeah, I thought so,' he said, so quietly Dean nearly missed it.

'But?'

Sam looked at him again, but this time there was hurt in his eyes.

'Sammy?'

But Sam just closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the glass and refused to answer.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, and when Dean threw the Impala into park in their drive the tape clicked over to its other side. The easy, mellow melodies of _Going to California_ came on.

'Well, that is a good one,' Dean offered. 'You can definitely dance to this one. Nice and slow. Just let your hands wander a little...' Dean mimicked tracing the curve of a woman's hips with his hands, smirking out the corner of his mouth.

'Jesus, Dean,' Sam choked. 'Would you just—' He cut off, paused for half a second with a kind of strangled look about his face and then scrambled from the car.

'Sam, wait!' Dean jumped to follow, left the radio going and the door wide open. 'Would you just. Wait!'

He caught up with Sam in three strides, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean—'

Sam threw him off hard, stumbling back a step.

'I _did_ dance with her, Dean!' he yelled. 'I did, and I thought— I wanted—but it wasn't— It just wasn't.'

Sam deflated right before Dean's eyes, sagging like he might topple at the first stiff breeze.

'Sam, what—?'

Dean was cut off by the surprisingly solid impact of a hundred pounds of lanky little brother hitting him square in the chest, nearly knocking him off balance. Wiry arms threaded around his chest ribs and squeezed with more strength than Dean had ever given his kid brother credit for.

'Shut up, Dean. Just. Shut up,' Sam mumbled into his chest, breath hot through Dean's tee and flannel.

It took Dean a second to respond, to get his arms around Sam's quivering shoulders and his hand in his hair and his lips pressed firmly to his hairline; but the moment he was fully enveloped, Sam relaxed, melting into Dean, pressing into him like he might be able to sink right through his skin if he tried hard enough.

'Sam,' Dean whispered. 'Tell me what this is about.'

'I-I did dance wth her,' Sam started out uncertainly, haltingly. 'But it wasn't— _she_ wasn't—'

'Not all she was cracked up to be, huh?' Dean asked gently, sifting a hand through Sam's silken hair.

'No... yes! It wasn't like that.' Sam huffed an irritated breath, rolled his forehead back and forth a little in denial. 'Once I had her, I... I wanted someone else.'

His last words were barely a whisper, shy and trembling. Dean traced the curve of Sam's ear with his thumb and smiled into his hair.

'Sammy, if it's not girls you want, it's okay. You know I—'

'I wanted _you_.'

Rushed and warm, the words spilled out of Sam to the beginning strains of _I'm Gonna Crawl_ , the soft haunting melody drifting out into the night.

Dean's heart surged in his chest and Sam's arms locked even tighter around his ribs, nose pressed hard and sharp against his breast bone like a blade that might kill him if he didn't play the next few seconds right.

His fingers stilled in Sam's hair, and he blew out a slow breath.

'Sam, I—'

'I know, Dean,' Sam said, and his voice was defeated, resigned to such a thin whisper of forsaken sound that Dean felt as if that knife blade had already slid home between his ribs, piercing his heart. 'I know you don't and it's okay and I promise I'll never say anything again, but tonight... Tonight, I needed you to know.'

'Jesus, Sammy...' Dean buried his face in Sam's hair and folded him closer. 'Just...Jesus.'

There weren't any words. Dean had shut them all away and forgotten them years ago. Because the love that he felt for Sam went far beyond family, way past little brother, and resembled venerated fealty with an understructure of obsessive passion.

Sam's baby smile and stained-glass-in-sunlight eyes had taken Dean prisoner the moment Mary had laid him in Dean's arms the very first time; and he had happily signed away his soul to the service of protecting and loving him until the day he died

'Dean?'

Sam sounded a little wary and breathless over Robert Plant singing softly, ' _Cause I get down on my knees..._

Dean's knees were shaking as he realized his lips had found the soft, soft skin just in front of Sam's ear and he was breathing erratically in hot little puffs.

'Dean.' Sam ducked his head lower against his brother's chest, hiccuped on a sob he could barely contain. 'Dean, I'm sorry.'

 _Oh, I pray that love won't die_ …

'No, Sam.' Dean bent his head to find Sam's trembling lips and brushed them, so very softly with his own. 'No, don't be sorry because,' he broke off, trying to find the breath to speak, to reawaken the words he had forced himself to lose. 'Because... _Every little bit of my love, every little bit, I give to you_ ,' he sang along softly to the music.

'Dean... ' Sam turned out of the kiss, buried his hot face in the curve of Dean's throat, and Dean could feel the warm wetness of his tears.

'Sam, I always... I always have,' Dean said.

'Why didn't you say?' Sam whispered.

Dean flinched a little, hurting because he had obviously hurt Sam, and he had been so sure that he was the only one suffering, would ever be the only one to suffer.

'I didn't— I couldn't put that on you, Sam.' Dean cradled the back of Sam's skull, tipped his face up so he could see the shine of those field-of-summer eyes in the pale moonlight, and ran a thumb across the curve of Sam's cheekbone. 'It's not a weight you should carry.'

'I want to carry it, Dean,' Sam begged, fingers twisting tight in Dean's shirt under his coat. 'Have carried it and thought I…was alone.'

Dean was speechless again with the pain in his chest, berating himself silently for not seeing before the delicate flame Sam had kept burning, all the while thinking it was only himself stumbling in the dark of this unsanctioned love. He tucked Sam's head more firmly into his shoulder and rocked them a little to the last strains of the song before the tape clicked off and left them in silence. They stood that way for a long while, oblivious to the chill, unwilling to break whatever fragile spell had been cast by moving out of the moment.

'Dean…?' Sam finally ventured in the softest of possible murmurs.

Dean was silent, still swaying a little to the ghost of the music that had been playing, Sam's thin body molded up against him, warm and safe and perfect. If he did this, if he gave in, there was a lifetime of lies and keeping to the shadows and hiding this newfound precious gift, dressing it in something like itself but pale by comparison to hide it from misunderstanding eyes. It was a long, hard road, and there would come a day Sam didn't want to walk it anymore. Dean knew that as sure as he knew the sun would rise in another nine hours. He was too stubborn, too fiery, too demanding. He would make demands one day, of life, of his brother, that Dean could not meet, and that would be the end, and Dean wasn't sure he could survive it. 

'Dean?' Sam tried again, even more softly, nuzzling impossibly closer.

_If I do this now…_

Dean sighed, weighted by the weariness to come but unable to forfeit this greatest of his heart's desires—its _only_ desire—and whispered back,

'Okay, Sammy. Okay.'

The sun bloomed against his chest in Sam's smile, soaking through his shirts and warming him like nothing else had in longer than he could remember. He felt a feather light kiss just under his jaw and closed his eyes tight against the prickle of hot tears that flooded in at that sweetest of gestures, and he knew whatever pain his future held, whatever solitary road he would one day walk—because there was no road but that, without his brother—it would be worth it for this. To hold summer in his arms in the shape of Sam's wide smiles and brilliant, sparkling eyes, until the autumn came and swept it all away with winter's first hard frost.

'Love you, Dean.'

'Yeah, kiddo. Love you, too.'


End file.
